Gaming on the Cheep: Mushrooms !

So I’m calling this month main topic gaming on the cheap. Always around this time of the yea.I go digging through stores looking for Halloween or Christmas themed items that I can use as terrain. Almost always you can find a great sale on something that can be used at your gaming table exceptionally cheap. With Halloween closeout and Christmas deals with a little time you can find some really cool stuff.
Often crafted items can be made very cheap, granted if you’re like me and not super skilled at crafting they may not look top-notch. But if you can at least make something passable your players will appreciate the work you put into it for them.

So a few days ago In a fit of boredom I grab some sculpey I have lying around and I crafted a little mushroom.

It got a few likes and some comments that I should make some more. My Friend Rob Davis suggested I make a blog showing my process of making them. Now I by no means am a sculptor of any skill. But this was a fun little project and I’m glad I decided to do it. So This one is for you Rob ! I started with Sculpey that I already had on hand for these mushrooms. I picked them up months and months ago. At the time I figured maybe for a dollar a color. As of this blog Sculpey looks to have gone up in price to about 2.50 for the nice stuff. You can still find a lot of 99 cent colors to use for a project like this, but your color choices are a bit more limited.

SO I started out by rolling out some caps and stems. I had no interest in making them look uniform. I wanted each of them to have a slightly different shape.

I found out after I made the stems I had picked up glow in the dark sculpy. Happy with the Stems, I hope will make a cool added “bio-luminescent” effect with the lights down.

So with the fun set of red mushrooms done I was trying to think of cool ways to use them at the table and I though how cool would a mushroom Ladder/Bridge be !
So I decided to whip up another batch.
This set I made to look more like Toadstools so it would be easier for players to make their way across and give the added element of elevation to some encounters as well.

So I whipped up some toadstools and got them backing straight away. As a Note when you bake with sculpey keep a close eye on it ! It can over bake without much effort ! 275 for 15 min per 1/4 an inch bake time. I wanted to try a tall high peeked mushroom and well lets just say user error ensued and this was the result. A sad burnt cap…

Thankfully with a little paint I am fairly certain no one will know who does not read this the tragedy of my ways here. Thankfully the other Mushrooms survived in turned out great ! here is my cool little toadstool bridge/staircase.

I think I will whip out some of my water effects liquid and put a little pool in each cap. As a note each of the caps was made large enough to hold at least one medium base Mini. So when I was done and started writing this out I just could not resist grabbing some mushrooms and a handful of mushroom men and making a Fungus cave. Have a look. I hope you like the effect.